Eefke Radeleff

I definitely attribute my success to the amazing mentors I've had along the way. I've had a couple people within the UCLA law system who have been incredibly impactful on me, and I've had professors that have been really impactful on me. Two of my heroes are Professor Kate McIntosh, the executive director of the UCLA Promise Institute in Europe, and Anna Spain Bradley within the UCLA Health System - she's just the loveliest woman, and every time I've been to one of her panels or had a conversation with her, she's just so inspiring and amazing to be in the same room with. But I also felt very driven by my own experiences, and I attribute a lot of my drive and passion for these things from what I went through myself. I have a mindset of what doesn't kill you makes you stronger, and that was a big driving force for me as well.

The best career advice I ever received was to be very fluid in the way you perceive your career trajectory. I think especially when you go to a school like UCLA, or Harvard, or any other good university, there's a lot of pressure to pick a path and stick to it. And I think through that, people get very cooped up and very isolated in their opportunities to advance their career. I've learned that the best way to advance yourself professionally, physically, mentally, in any aspect of your life really, is to be open to new opportunities and be open to fields that might not seem related to your own. Being open to trying new things and being open to changing your mind about what you want to do with your life might get you further than grinding on one path.

Don't be afraid to have a presence. That's the biggest thing I always tell women. I think that women in professional fields tend to be overly apologetic for having a presence, and I think it's so important in this day and age for girls to be confident in who they are and who they want to be, and know who they are, know who they can be, and be confident in their sense of self. I know so many beautiful and intelligent girls who are so afraid to put themselves out there, and I would love to see a shift in the professional field where women are more confident in their intelligence and their skills, and they know who they are and they're confident showing who they are. It's one thing to be present, but it's another thing to have a presence.

I've basically chosen the two most controversial fields to be in right now, which is public health and international law. Both are incredibly prickly with everything going on in the world. In public health, one of the biggest challenges is getting people to believe in public health and getting people to trust science and trust the statistics. I think health is political, but you have to take away the political lens in which health is perceived in order to make an impact on people, because people get very divided very quickly, and I think that's a huge struggle public health professionals have. Within the international law field, I think a major issue we're experiencing right now is a lack of effectiveness in implementing and enforcing international law, which is leading to situations as we've seen in Palestine and situations we've seen in the Middle East in terms of war crimes, especially crimes being committed against women, that aren't recognized as violations of international law, but there's not much enforcement that can be done.

I have a lot of values that I try my best to carry. I think that it's really important to have tenacity, and I pride myself a lot on persevering through hard times, stress, suffering, anything like that. I definitely think it's important to be dependable, and I pride myself on being dependable to the people around me and making others feel like they can rely on me to get things done and help them. I've always wanted to help people, and I think being dependable and being tenacious are two values that are kind of a requirement of that.